On 7 February the Daily Mail carried a report of a court clerk who was caught watching hard-core pornography on his monitor by a judge. What makes the case even more disturbing – if that is possible – is the fact that he perused the images DURING A RAPE TRIAL, while the victim was giving evidence.

Debasish Majumder looked at photographs of topless women being gagged and couples engaged in sexual acts, Kingston Crown Court was told. Majumder, who had worked at Inner London Crown Court for a number of years, later admitted routinely watching porn while trials were taking place, the report added.

Prosecutor Annabel Darlow said: “Majumder was working as a court clerk at Inner London and his conduct constituted a wholesale abuse of his position and the equipment provided in that he viewed porn sites on his court computer whilst the court was engaged in the conduct of a trial on an allegation of rape.”

Anger with the police was a key cause of the riots which hit England in August, a study has said.

Widespread frustration with policing methods, and a deeper sense of antipathy with the force as a whole, was widespread among the rioters according to the study by the London School of Economics and the Guardian.